Why Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical is Compared to the Butlerian Jihad from the World of «Dune», and Why He Draws His Main Wisdom from the Words of Gandalf

Although social media, when comparing Pope Leo XIV's encyclical to the Butlerian Jihad, uses frames with Paul Muad'Dib (Timothée Chalamet) from Denis Villeneuve's film 'Dune', in the chronology of the universe this is an anachronism, as millennia lie between these events. Still from the film

From the Tower of Babel to Thinking Machines

In late May 2026, the Vatican published  *Magnifica Humanitas*  («Magnificent Humanity») — the first encyclical of Leo XIV. Symbolically, the document was signed on the 135th anniversary of  *Rerum Novarum*, the historical treatise by Leo XIII, which once defended workers' rights against faceless industrialization.

Now, artificial intelligence has become the target. The Pope called for algorithms to be effectively «disarmed», depriving them of the right to make decisions in the military sphere and freeing humanity from the logic of digital dominance.

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Pope Leo XIV. Photo: Getty Images / Simone Risoluti — Vatican Media via Vatican Pool 

The text contains a warning that people stand before a choice between building a new Tower of Babel, where efficiency destroys human dignity, and restoring Jerusalem, based on shared responsibility.

Techno-skeptics and long-time critics of generative algorithms rejoiced at the unexpected ally, while convinced atheists and agnostics joked that they were ready to return to the fold of the church even today if it truly started burning data centers.

The very idea that the Catholic Church, the most influential religious organization in the world, with two thousand years of history and uniting 1.3 billion believers, declares a holy war on artificial intelligence, is captivating in its artistic expression. 

The Pope is kicking off Butlerian Jihad! https://t.co/sEfxzdgX1B pic.twitter.com/3vyZpcuJ92

— François Valentin (@Valen10Francois) May 25, 2026

The internet's reaction to the papal manifesto proved no less interesting than the text itself. Social networks were instantly filled with memes comparing the pontiff's call to the beginning of the Butlerian Jihad.

This concept, taken from Frank Herbert's «Dune» universe, the first book of which was published exactly 61 years ago, proved to be an ideal metaphor for describing contemporary anxieties. (The book, by the way, has been translated into Belarusian and is sold by the «Januškievič» publishing house.)

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The Butlerian Jihad of humanity against intelligent machines. Still from the animated prologue of the television version of 'Dune' (1984)

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«Butlerian Jihad now!» Photo from social media

According to the novel's mythology, millennia before the birth of Paul Atreides, humanity experienced a catastrophic war against «thinking machines», known as the Butlerian Jihad, after carelessly delegating control over their own lives to them.

As a result of the rebels' victory, the text of the syncretic Orange Catholic Bible was created with a strict commandment that forever forbade the creation of machines in the likeness of the human mind.

The Orange Catholic Bible in Real Life

Social media users ironized that as soon as the Roman Pope effectively declared a holy war on algorithms, all enthusiasts of historical reconstructions, new crusaders with crosses tattooed on their chests, who had so long prayed for a new crusade, immediately disappeared.

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Cover of the first edition of the novel 'Dune', published in 1965. 'Dune' became a true cult among the scientific and technical intelligentsia (physicists, mathematicians, programmers, and engineers), captivating them with its depth more strongly than classic space fiction.

Observers rightly drew attention to the atypical biography of Leo XIV himself, who was a mathematics student from Chicago before taking his vows. Today he is seventy years old, and it is highly probable that in his youth he not only heard about Herbert's universe but also read the series at least up to the novel «God Emperor of Dune» — it is unlikely that he could have missed this series given its popularity. 

In the American science fiction author's books, the rejection of computers led to the development of human abilities through the orders of Mentats and Bene Gesserit, as the author fully shared the philosophical thesis that the use of machines inevitably teaches people to think like machines.

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The Bene Gesserit sisterhood was called upon to develop humanity and protect it from destruction when humans annihilated all intelligent machines. Still from the animated prologue of the television version of 'Dune' (1984)

The Vatican repeats this idea almost verbatim, warning of the threat of losing the freedom of moral choice when a person surrenders all subjectivity to neural networks.

Data Colonialism and New Slaves

Behind the fantastic metaphors in the encyclical lies a very harsh assessment.

The Vatican directly calls the current corporate approach to collecting medical data, genetic maps, and demographic information digital neocolonialism. This data has become «new rare earth», extracted from vulnerable regions to train commercial models.

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Humanity in slavery to intelligent machines. Still from the animated prologue of the television version of 'Dune' (1984)

Here again, a comparison with the economy of the planet Arrakis is fitting, where the entire imperial system relied on the harsh extraction of spice by workers in deadly desert conditions, while the aristocracy counted profits from a safe distance.

The Pope reminds that behind every flawless chatbot response lies the hidden work of content moderators forced to view traumatic images, and miners extracting resources for server production. Interestingly, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was present at the document's presentation in Rome. He publicly admitted that developers still find unexplained structures within their models that frighteningly resemble human neurobiology and simulate states of fear or pleasure.

Gandalf's Wisdom Instead of Latin

Stylistically,  *Magnifica Humanitas*  also breaks centuries-old church templates. This is the first encyclical that has no official Latin version at all, finally solidifying the Church's transition to modern languages of communication. But even more impressive is the wealth of secular and literary references.

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Gandalf — one of the sources of Pope Leo XIV's encyclical. Still from the film 'The Fellowship of the Ring'

To explain the nature of personal responsibility in an era of global shifts, Leo XIV integrates Gandalf's words from the chapter «The Last Debate» in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel «The Return of the King» into the document. The wizard says that it is not our part to govern all the tides of the world, but to root out the evil in the lands that we know, so that those who come after may have clean earth to till.

Instead of exclusively quoting Church Fathers, the pontiff refers to a wide range of secular thinkers and art. He draws on Hannah Arendt's works for an analysis of ideological totalitarianism, mentions Viktor Frankl's experience in concentration camps to illustrate the search for meaning in life during the darkest times, and also calls Pablo Picasso's painting «Guernica» and Steven Spielberg's film «Schindler's List» prophetic warnings against dehumanization. All this makes the text not just a religious message, but a global cultural manifesto.

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The Butlerian Jihad of humanity against intelligent machines in Frank Herbert's 'Dune' universe led people to the necessity of developing their own superhuman abilities. Still from the recent series 'Dune: Prophecy'

The Vatican is certainly not preparing to physically destroy computers or declare a crusade on data centers. But Leo XIV has formulated the main paradox of our time: while billionaires dream of digital immortality and perceive algorithms with quasi-religious pathos, it is precisely the Church that acts as a sober defender of human flaws and limitations.

If society optimizes itself to the extent that it completely loses the need to make moral choices and delegates all complex decisions to computational systems, it will simply cease to be human. And then no Orange Catholic Bible will help us regain our own subjectivity.

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